L.last week, 30 Rock actor Alec Baldwin spoke out in defense of Woody Allen after the HBO premiere of All to Farrow, a four-part docuseries investigating the allegation that the celebrated filmmaker sexually assaulted his 7-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, in the attic of their Connecticut mansion on August 4, 1992.
“Who needs courtrooms or rule of law when we are tried by the media?” Baldwin wrote on Twitter alongside an article about the documentary.
Baldwin’s criticism was sent to his hundreds of thousands of followers the day after the premiere, it turns out SNLTrump decided to pass judgment on the entire series after seeing only the first episode. As a whole, All to Farrow includes testimonials from Dylan, Mia and Ronan Farrow as well as interviews with neighbors, family friends, city and government officials, and a wealth of never-before-seen documents, as well as audio recordings of telephone conversations between Woody and Mia.
The filmmakers, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, were more than a little surprised by the “trial by media” claim.
“Wow. How can he say that? He hasn’t seen everything yet,” Ziering tells The Daily Beast. “I think the media’s trial has taken place for the past three decades, Alec. Let’s see who was tried and convicted. He must a) watch the series; and b) look at the role the media played in spreading spider instead of truth, by not checking facts, excoriating someone and condemning her [Mia Farrow] without any diligence for three decades, and then talk to us about process through the media. “
The third episode of All to Farrow, which premieres this Sunday night, does indeed focus on how Allen armed the media against Farrow in the aftermath of Dylan’s allegation of sexual assault against Allen. Immediately after news that Allen was under investigation by police, he held a press conference at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, where he expressed his love for Farrow’s middle-aged daughter Soon-Yi and accused Farrow of fabricating the charges in revenge – although Farrow had taken Dylan to a pediatrician to have her discuss the accusation, and the pediatrician independently reported the matter to the police.
Echoing the press, Allen did story interviews with TIME Newsweek, and People, and also sat down for an interview with 60 minutes. Mia Farrow says she wanted to keep the case private for the sake of her children and did not allow interviews at the time. Because of her point of view, Allen’s story seemingly took hold of the media, and by extension public consciousness, portraying Farrow as a vengeful woman scorned.
She chose to protect her family instead of telling the story.
Woody’s story was so prominent in part because Mia chose not to speak to the media, because she knew that if she did, it would only fuel the media more, and it already had such a traumatic effect on her family. if it was, she felt it was best for her family to say nothing, “explains Dick.” So she chose to protect her family instead of telling the story. “
I would like to bring a point back to Alec Baldwin: if you watch the series, it is Woody Allen who made the story public. It wasn’t Mia, ”adds Ziering. It was Woody Allen who called the first press conference. It was Woody Allen who put herself on the cover of TIME and Newsweek, and agreed to one 60 minutes interview. This is the first time Mia has ever spoken extensively about this issue in front of the camera. “
But again, Baldwin isn’t exactly the poster child for the # MeToo movement. In 2017, he briefly left Twitter after criticizing one of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged rape victims, Rose McGowan, for reaching a financial settlement with him. Baldwin also complained to Megyn Kelly that the #MeToo movement targeted innocent men and joked that he didn’t even know if touching his wife, Hilaria Baldwin – who is not Hispanic – was now ‘inappropriate’. (There was also his infamous performance in the documentary of close friend James Toback wandering with Roman Polanski aboard a yacht.)
Another character who goes into battle in Episode 3 of All to Farrow is the filmmaker’s longtime attorney, Elkan Abramowitz, who represented Allen at the time of the abuse charge and subsequent custody trial (another of his past clients: Harvey Weinstein). This week, Abramowitz was detained by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo amid an investigation into his alleged cover of COVID nursing homes, as well as three allegations of sexual harassment against him, two from former aides.
When I shared the Cuomo news with Dick and Ziering, they laughed.
“Oh dear. I don’t think he saw the series,” Ziering offers. “I don’t think those episodes have aired yet, so he wouldn’t know – and neither did Elkan.”
“There seems to be a list of usual suspects who have traffic in these types of cases,” she adds. “They know the script.”
As for Baldwin, on Wednesday night he announced that he was quitting Twitter again, calling it a place where “all the bastards in the United States and beyond get their advanced bastard degrees”.
The Daily Beast will have additional conversations with Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering immediately after episodes 3 and 4 of All to Farrow.